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Arce in deep against Donaire on Saturday

By Dan Ambrose: 33-year-old Jorge Arce (61-6-1, 46 KO’s) is a huge underdog for this Saturday’s fight between him and WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (30-1, 19 KO’s) on HBO Sports at the Toyota Center in Los Angeles, California. The problem that Arce, 5’4”, has in this fight is threefold. He’s much shorter than the 5’6 ½” Donaire, he’s not as powerful as him and he’s much slower as well. Those are three pretty big areas for Arce to be at a disadvantage in because you don’t like to see a fighter missing all of those ingredients fighting a champion on television.

It tends to make for a bad fight, but that I don’t think this bout was made because it was thought that Arce had a chance to win. Arce appears to have been selected more so for his past accomplishments and because of his popularity among Mexican boxing fans rather than what he’s done lately. Arce hasn’t been fighting all that great recently since his come from behind stoppage win over Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. a year ago.

For Arce to win on Saturday he’s going to have to try and close the distance so that he can get near enough to connect with his shorter arms. He doesn’t have the reach to hit Donaire unless he gets really close to him, and that’s going to be a problem because Donaire doesn’t let his opposition get near him without making them pay dearly first.

Donaire has recently beaten Toshiaki Nishioka, Jeffrey Mathebula, Wilfredo Vazquez Jr., and Omar Narvaez. He only looked good in the Nishioka fight, but perhaps a big part of that was Nishioka’s advanced age. Nishioka, 36, hadn’t fought for well over a year when he took the fight and he hadn’t looked good in his last fight before the Donaire bout. Still, Donaire said he was the best super bantamweight in the division but it didn’t turn out that way because Nishioka looked like the worst.